The Struggle to Be Gay-in Mexico, for Example

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"Roger Lancaster is among our most astute observers of sexuality and power, and The Struggle to be Gay--in Mexico, for Example continues his work documenting the intimacies of power in the Americas. Wonderfully clear in its analytical points, courageous in going against popular trends in queer theory, and moving in its description of love and loss, Lancaster's book is an indispensable guide to how half a century of neoliberalism has made, unmade, and remade gay life in Mexico."--Greg Grandin, Yale University "In The Struggle to be Gay--in Mexico, for Example, Roger Lancaster situates gay identity brilliantly within Mexican political economy and historically specific social structures, particularly class as lived concretely. The way he blends empirical and historical analysis, ethnography, and reflexive personal narrative is inspired. In the course of demonstrating that sexual orientation, like other identities, is always constituted within evolving social relations, he also provides a substantive critique of, and alternative to, the taxonomic fetishism that characterizes much of highly theorized academic sex/gender studies. This beautifully written, deeply sophisticated, and informative book further underscores Lancaster's standing as one of the most important scholars of our era working on sex/gender studies and culture and political economy."--Adolph Reed, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania "The Struggle to Be Gay--in Mexico, for Example combines scrupulous ethnographic observation with a trenchant analysis of contemporary capitalism. The setting is the gay world of Mexico, but as the title suggests, this book has wider implications for understanding the relations between sexuality and modernity. In challenging queer scholars to engage more with class and the legacies of colonialism, Lancaster has written an important and engaging book."--Dennis Altman, author of Global Sex and Queer Wars "A refreshingly unorthodox book, original in both its content and its form: an integrated blend of personal memoir and social analysis, untranscended emotion and high theory. Roger Lancaster movingly conveys what he has learned about his own struggle to be gay by participating in the struggles of his friends and neighbors in Mexico. The lessons he draws from these vividly recounted, often painful, and always recognizable experiences of sex and inequality under capitalism present a welcome challenge to the field of LGBT studies, its practices, and its conventions."--David M. Halperin, author of How To Be Gay "Roger Lancaster captivates us with a deeply personal and satisfying account of Mexican gay men's lives and identities. His ever-engaging narrative is informed by situated knowledge of Mexican homosexualities that he acquired over decades of friendship with urban Mexican gay men. Lancaster colorfully describes a country where understandings of sexuality have been in constant transition for the past century, as Mexico constructed its own version of modernity. The picture that emerges in this fascinating book is of a Mexico where gay-identified people grapple with pervasive material inequalities while simultaneously contributing to a growing collective emphasis on diversity and the pursuit of social change."--Héctor Carrillo, Northwestern University "This book provides groundbreaking theoretical interventions into the 'material foundations of sexual identity' as well as heart-wrenching descriptions and analyses of how these material realities shape sexual identities and possibilities for gay men in Mexico."--Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap "From a dazzling scholar-writer with heart-wrenching stories and a refreshing class analysis comes The Struggle to Be Gay in Mexico, For Example. I love this book. I couldn't put it down. In gorgeous prose, Roger Lancaster shows the struggle to be gay, to fulfill one's full potential, to be free is intimately tied to the material conditions of life, made scarce by the forces of globalized capitalist political economy. Lancaster plumbs details of gay life over the decades of his observations in Mexico and not only in Mexico, to reveal our universal predicament. He shows how identity, needs, desires, and aspirations come up against class dynamics and brutal economics, therewith making sense of the very human ache of unfulfilled longing."--Alisse Waterston, author of Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning "Combining perceptive ethnographic observations, powerful memoir, and deep historical dives, this marvelous book offers an insightful meditation on gay life in Mexico and beyond. By way of both empirical and theoretical demonstration, Lancaster persuasively argues that we can only explicate gay people's lived experiences--their precarious daily lives, their suffering and desires, their persistent hopes and aspirations--through a serious consideration of social class dynamics. This book is a true gem, and should be used, discussed, and emulated in the years to come."--Javier Auyero, University of Texas at Austin "Casting a gimlet eye over class as 'the dirty secret of gay life' in Mexico and beyond, Roger Lancaster shows that we are who we are in good measure in relation to the resources we bring to bear. In his inimitable fashion, Lancaster documents working class gay life through local scenes and global connections, contending with the vogue of identity politics to document the salience of political economy (and Marxism!) in the struggle to be gay in a changing Mexico."--Matthew Gutmann, author of Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short "Here is a dazzling experimental ethnography by Roger Lancaster of Mexican men who love men, contesting 'queer' and gay Euro-American modernist and identitarian academic paradigms. He deftly situates an array of human experiences within the warps of the global economy and the local iterations of class and race that sculpt the intimate, liberatory dreams and desires of these men but severely constrains their lived experiences, particularly of the rural indigenous poor."--Ramón Gutierrez, University of Chicago "Roger N. Lancaster's The Struggle to be Gay--in Mexico, for Example is a lucid, compassionate, analytically rich book about the way global capitalism has ever more deeply formed and deformed our sexualities in the post-1960s. Focusing on working-class lives in Mexico City and Puebla, while keeping his US origins in the frame, he gently urges us to take stock of why the idea of being 'gay' can sound so outmoded in one place and so utopian in another. With its humane attention to the limits of our theories and the power of our dreams, The Struggle to be Gay opens up new paths in the study of 21st-century sexuality."--Chris Nealon, Johns Hopkins University "Queer and LGBTQ+ studies are stuck in a rut. Thankfully, Lancaster's book promises nothing short of a paradigm shift, moving us from naïve narratives of resistance and exhausting debates over authenticity and toward a rich appreciation for the political economy of sexual identity. In this brilliant mix of social theory, ethnography, and personal experience, The Struggle to be Gay--in Mexico, for Example places class at the center of gay life in Mexico--and everywhere else."--Joanna Wuest, author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement "Lancaster has produced a nuanced materialist reading of life, love, work, and dashed dreams in the gay world of working-class queers in Puebla that also reminds us of how class similarly impacts American working-class queers. He details how class (and race) conditions the lived experience of homosexuals, especially those perched at the precarious margins. Lancaster confronts the reader with his subjects' frustrations, dreams, and aspirations and shows how relationships with family, friends, and strangers helped working-class gay men cope with the challenges and setbacks they encountered, as the old rules of survival changed under neoliberalism in 2007 to 2022 and the spaces where they learned to be gay were destroyed under the guise of urban renewal. In this rich, hybrid text that is part memoir, part fieldnotes, and part chronicles, Lancaster recounts how working-class gay men struggled to secure a comfortable, safe, and satisfying gay life and coped with homelessness, homophobia, religion, STDs, insecurity, privation, and racism."--Víctor M. Macías-González, The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

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